Two Defensible Readings of an Ending: Marking the Interpretation Question
Candidates read this ending and answer a 5-mark question. “Dev locked the shop for the last time and stood a moment under the sign his father had painted. The window was empty now; at noon it had held sixty watches, each wound to the same hour. He carried the box of spare parts to the skip behind the market, set it down, and did not look inside. A boy asked him the time. Dev, who had not worn a watch in twenty years, told him, and the boy ran off satisfied. Dev walked to the bus stand.” Question: “Does the ending present Dev’s decision as loss or as release? Support your answer with two details from the passage.” Answer 1 argues loss, citing the empty window and “he did not look inside,” read as grief. Answer 2 argues release, citing “did not look inside” and “had not worn a watch in twenty years,” read as long detachment. Both quote accurately. A marker gives Answer 1 five marks and Answer 2 three, explaining that loss is “the obvious reading.”
1. Re-mark both answers and state the criteria the marker should have applied.
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Both can reach 5; the marker has rewarded agreement rather than argument.
What the scheme rewards in an “informed personal response” question:
- A clear central claim, stated early.
- Two details accurately drawn from the passage.
- An explained link from each detail to the claim - not merely a quoted detail followed by a restatement of the claim.
- Consistency: the claim survives the whole passage, including “the boy ran off satisfied.”
Answer 1 meets 1–3; “did not look inside” is read as grief, which is plausible but asserted rather than argued, so a strict marker could withhold full marks for the unsupported linking.
Answer 2 is doing something more interesting: “had not worn a watch in twenty years” reframes the shop as the father’s world, not Dev’s, and the ease of telling the time without an instrument shows competence detached from the object. That is a well-evidenced counter-intuitive reading and should be credited as highly as Answer 1.
The marker’s error is treating the first reading that occurs to an adult reader as the correct one. On an interpretation question, the discriminator is the quality of the argument, not its direction.
2. A third answer writes: “The window was empty and he felt empty too.” How should this be handled under a scheme that permits interpretation?
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Distinguish interpretation from invention. “The window was empty” is quoted. “He felt empty too” is presented as though it were in the text; it is not, and the passage conspicuously withholds Dev’s feelings - we are given actions (“set it down,” “did not look inside,” “walked”) and no interior statement.
Handle it in two steps:
- Do not count “he felt empty” as one of the two required details; it is not textual evidence.
- If the invented feeling is doing all the work - no other evidence, no explanation - cap the mark at 2. If the script elsewhere supplies accurate detail and argues from it, deduct proportionately rather than zeroing the answer, since the misreading is local.
Teach the difference explicitly, because students blur it under time pressure:
- Invention: “the window was empty and he felt empty too.”
- Interpretation: “the empty window suggests a sense of emptiness, reinforced by the fact that he does not look inside the box.”
The second is legitimate because the claim is marked as a reading and is tied to observable detail. The first smuggles a feeling into the text as fact.
3. Write a follow-up question (3 marks) that would separate the two readings on evidence rather than opinion.
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Question: “The writer tells us that Dev ‘had not worn a watch in twenty years.’ Explain why this detail is placed near the end of the story rather than near the beginning. (3 marks)”
Why it discriminates: the detail is not new information so much as a re-framing. Placed at the end, it sends the reader back through the shop, the sixty watches wound to the same hour, and the father’s sign, and recasts them as the father’s life rather than Dev’s inheritance. A reader committed to “loss” must now explain why the loss is the narrator’s and not Dev’s; a reader committed to “release” must show how the placement produces that recognition.
Marking: 1 mark for identifying that the detail re-frames earlier material; 1 for explaining what it re-frames (the shop as the father’s world; Dev as long detached from the object he is now disposing of); 1 for linking the placement to the ending’s effect - the boy’s question answered without a watch, so that Dev’s competence is shown immediately after the revelation.
Answers that simply paraphrase (“because he had stopped wearing watches”) earn 0 for the placement question, however true the statement.